Don't Throw Away Your Old Phone — Build a Robot Instead
Your old phone might not be worth much on the secondhand market, but it could still have a future in robotics. Even aging smartphones pack powerful processors, cameras, motion sensors, and wireless connectivity into a single device. Researchers at UCLA realized that these capabilities could replace much of the expensive electronics normally needed to build a robot. Their solution is PhoneBot, an open source humanoid robot that uses an ordinary Android smartphone as its brain.
PhoneBot stands approximately 19 inches tall, weighs four pounds, and costs around $400 to build, excluding the smartphone. It doesn't have arms or a head, but it can walk on two legs, track people with its camera, and get back on its feet after falling down.
The robot's lower body has 12 degrees of freedom, with three joints at each hip, one at each knee, and two at each ankle. A thirteenth joint rotates...
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